Many elderly people live alone. The elderly also are at risk from disease and illness. Among other symptoms, a person may begin walking slower as their health declines or when they become ill. Similarly, a person recovering from an illness may begin walking faster as their health improves. Thus, a person's walking speed may be used as an indicator of health.
A system for identifying the walking speed of person in his living space is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,535,368.
The disclosed system comprises a plurality of sensors disposed in various rooms of a home. The sensors provide signals representative of motion and/or the location of the person within the home. The system also includes a unit receiving the sensor signals. The unit derives the location of the person on the basis of the sensor signals. The unit establishes a travel time for a path traveled by the person through the structure based on the established locations and stores the travel time. The unit measures the time traveled by the person through his home along a path defined by a number of sensor locations. The unit identifies a change in the person's walking speed by identifying changes in the travel time for the path traveled by the person.
The system may alert a caregiver to inform them of the change in walking speed identified by the system.
It is important that the reliability of the determined changing in walking speed is high, so that the caregiver can trust the information about the walking speed changings and false alerts are prevented.